follow by email

Introducing the Architecture of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona, Spain

When I was in Barcelona a year ago this February for a weekend Sigur Rós concert, I ended up spending most of my time in the city hunting down homes and churches designed by the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí (pronounced “uhn-TOH-nee guh-oo-DEE” [ənˈtɔ.ni gəwˈði]). Born and raised in the Catalunya region of which Barcelona is the capital, Gaudi was associated with the Modernisme or Art Nouveau movement and worked in Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries. The buildings he planned are as much a symbol of the city of Barcelona as Frank Lloyd Wright’s are of Chicago.

Gaudí was fascinated by the natural world and by geometry, two fields of study that greatly influenced his design philosophy. Flowing, organic forms appear all over his buildings, and scary math terms like paraboloids, hyperboloids, and helicoids create arches and ceilings that are at once elegant and very structurally strong. Instead of making traditional blueprints, Gaudí devised a complex set of hanging chains that he attached to a ceiling to figure out the design for many of his religious commissions like the still-in-progress Sagrada Família or never-finished Colònia Güell. These catenary curves(from the Latin word for “chain,” catena) represent the shape that chains take when they’re suspended and allowed to droop down naturally under gravity’s force. Looking in a mirror on the floor, Gaudí would then make his plans for a building.

This unique combination of natural elements and geometric forms—a fusion of biology and mathematics—is what attracts me so much to his architecture. His early works, which are creative and original takes on the Gothic- and Mudéjar-Revival styles of his day, are also interesting, but his later commissions are simply fascinating because they’re just so different from conventional design.

Over the next week or so, I’m going to be publishing a post every day about one of Gaudí’s seven major works in Barcelona:

What others are reading:

If you’re like me, you’ve probably learned Spanish as it’s spoken throughout Latin America. Now, I know there is no one single standard Latin American accent, but there are a few things I’ve noticed when listening to Spaniards speak that distinguish them from Spanish speakers in, for example, Nicaragua or Argentina. Since living here for the greater part of a year, I’ve both consciously resisted and unconsciously picked up on many features of the typical Spanish accent. After thinking about it for a while, I’ve decided there are around five characteristics that most distinguish the Spanish of Spain from the Spanish of the Americas. These five sounds, when spoken in the Castilian way, will bring you much closer to sounding native.

1) Pronounce C before E & I and Z like TH
In the Americas you’ll hear the words ciudad (“city”), cereza (“cherry”), and zorro (“fox”) pronounced as “see-oo-DAHD” [sjuˈðað], “say-RAY-sah” [seˈɾe.sa], and “SOE-rroe” [ˈso.ro]. However, in Spain, you’ll pick …

This week I’ll be going into my third week in Spanish classrooms, but even in that short amount of time I’ve picked up on the words the kiddos use to get the attention of me or the teacher I’m helping.

1) profe
Pronounced “PROE-fay” [ˈpɾo.fe], this is a shortening of the Spanish word profesor or profesora, which looks like our word “professor” but means both university professor and teacher in any grade.

2) seño
Pronounced “SAY-nyoe” [ˈse.ɲo], this is a shortening of the Spanish words señorita (“Miss”) or señora (“Mrs.”). Two syllables are always easier to say than three or four!

4) teacher
In Spain, they learn British English in schools, so they pronounce the word “teacher” as “TEE-chuh” [ˈti.tʃə]. Sometimes they do attempt the American pronunciation, but it comes out more like “TEE-chahrr” [ˈti.tʃar].

Read my Galician crash course here to get up to speed in the language.Galician is a Romance language (i.e., from Latin) spoken by about 3 million people in Spain’s northwestern region of Galicia. Although it’s most closely related to Portuguese—which is spoken south of the border—it shares many similarities with Castilian Spanish, including sounds and spelling.

If you’re planning on spending any time traveling or living in this unique corner of Spain, or walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that ends here, even a tiny knowledge of Galician will help you get around and navigate menus, maps, etc. If you happen to speak Spanish, you’re already 80% of the way to understanding Galician, and I’m serious! Getting a grasp on the grammatical and phonological differences will turbo boost you up to 90%.